That is So Fetch! The Plastics of Morehouse Have Balls

Last year Morehouse, the all-male college in Atlanta, enacted a strict dress code policy. No caps, sagging pants, do-rags. Also banned: Dresses, pumps or purses. The college said it decided to outlaw female attire because of "five students who are living a gay lifestyle that is leading them to dress a way we do not expect in Morehouse men.” Many found the new rule discriminatory, including Diamond Martin Poulin, one of the five students the college was referring to. The 20-year-old spoke with Vibe.

"Morehouse wasn’t ready for me,” says Diamond, who has the word “unbreakable” tattooed on his collarbone and the acronym C.R.E.A.M (“Cash Rules Everything Around Me” coined by rap group Wu Tang Clan) wrapped around his right wrist. “I’m about freedom of expression. I’m about being whomever you truly are inside. I came to Morehouse because of all the historical leaders that attended and impacted the world so heavily. You know, I really wanted to follow in their footsteps. I don’t think Morehouse believes that someone like me—someone who wears heels and dresses—can uphold that reputation. But they’re wrong.”

Although it has never been officially confirmed, it’s not too far off the mark to believe that those “five students” at whom the appropriate attire policy was directed included Diamond and his crew, the Plastics. The group is loosely made up of seven or eight former and current Morehouse students, some of whom share a modest townhouse in Atlanta. Their name is a nod to the A-list crowd depicted in the 2004 movie Mean Girls.

The Plastics all assume that the recent appropriate attire policy was aimed directly at their personal freedom of expression, which sometimes includes foundation, cross-dressing, and even taking female hormones.

“I’ve always been into clothes, shoes, hair and everything,” says Diamond, who was born and raised in Providence, R.I. He says there’s a good chance he’ll transition into a woman at some point. “My mother says I always played dress-up in her clothes, my grandmother’s clothes. I’d even get my brother to do it sometimes. That’s just always been me—pushing the envelope of what I’m supposed to be as a man.”

So does Diamond really consider herself a man? At the question, he groans. “Yes, I refer to myself as a man, you know, to relieve any confusion. Sometimes people don’t understand the whole androgyny thing. There’s always the question: Well, what are you? Yes, I’m a man. I like women’s clothes. And yeah, I’m gay. But I don’t want that to define me. How come people can’t just see me as a person?”

Diamond, pictured, left Morehouse after the ban and is now majoring in fashion marketing and design at American InterContinental University, where he and the Plastics are letting those other bitches have it and making fetch happen, of course.

Update: The students of Morehouse react to the article and we think they're not happy. Sidebar: How all y'all doin' and alllrrriiiiiggghhht!

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1 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Much noise being made-little being said. Morehouse is an ALL MALE College! If someone is not ALL MALE, they shouldn't be bellyaching about officials of the school enforcing their policy. Sure plenty of gay men have graduated from places like Morehouse, the Citadel, Westpoint and various other traditionally male schools. However, everyone is there to get educated--not make a public spectacle of themselves parading around in drag outfits and drawing negative attention to themselve. Sure college is a great place to discover all of your "gifts" no matter who you are [inside] or how you are perceived [outwardly]. People today have deeply and regrettably begun to confuse with self-respect with self-acceptance.

You may accept yourself as one thing and others may respect you as that--this doesn't mean THEY have to agree with your perception of how who you believe you are. Case in point:

Not so long ago racist and/or ignorant whites believed Africans were not human beings, that we didn't have thoughts and feelings, that we even had tails... Africans knew they were human and never stopped believing that even though we were rounded up like beasts and taken into a system of slavery that became more savage than the jungles they left.

Fast forward: There are still those who are ignorant enough to perpetuate these beliefs and spread paranoia and confusion. So what's the point?

We should respect others rights to be stupid, lowclass, wrong, ignorant and whatever else they want to be. They should understand, this is America--there are laws here that we all should respect whether we agree with them or not. Change can only occur when we respect each other enough to listen to all points of view, examine these beliefs for evidence of truth and then decide how best to proceed.

Until then, we all just all shouting in the wind, sound bouncing from one end of the earth to the other and chaos all in between. Let me guy wear whatever he wants OFF campus--but as long as he's on campus, he should reflect and respect the school's policies. That includes the straight guys too...plenty of them are doing God only knows what with persons of the opposite sex, which is why gay people have a right to their voice. Corruption is corruption no matter what your sexual, political or intellectual orientation happens to be. Slack attitudes and "my way or the highway" morals and beliefs are destroying everything good about out society. When is enough more that enough?